On November 1963 – coincidentally, just a day after the assassination of President Kennedy – British viewers sat down to watch a new science fiction programme designed to fill the grandstand at Juke Box Jury.
Minutes later, a mysterious figure with a flowing white cloak and a Victorian frock emerged from the fog – and a television legend was born.
The first Doctor Who was a crotchety old man played by William Hartnell, a crotchety old man who had spent his career playing absolute cunts in army films and TV series like The Army Game, Carry On the Army and Dad’s Army. Hartnell was delighted at the opportunity to play a role aimed at children and weirdos.
Doctor Who lived in a time machine disguised as a wheezing groaning police telephone with roundels and in the first story went back to caveman times. But it was the second story, The Daleks, that turned the series into a national phenomenon by introducing the series’ most iconic villains – the Daleks!
The Daleks were originally Georgian State Dancers from the planet Skaro who had been turned into ruthless metal killing machines with their grating cry of ‘Exterminate!’ Soon children up and down the country were running round the playground copying their grating cry of ‘Exterminate!’ as the era of Dalekmonium was born.
After three years, William Hartnell became too racist to carry on as Doctor Who, and so was “regenerated” into Patrick Troughton, a successful character actor who didn’t like shouting in the evenings and played the part as a sort of Chaplinesque cosmic hobo with a flute. Troughton had originally wanted to play the part as a blacked-up windjammer captain but no-one knew what one of these was. At first he wore a stovepipe hat but this was soon abandoned because it made him look like a stovepipe.
Troughton’s era was known as the monster era because of all the monsters in that era but, after three years, he was captured and put on trial by his own people – named for the first time as the Time Lords, one of whom was played by Martin Trevor who had played Doctor Who on stage in Doctor Who and the Daleks in Seven Keys for Seven Brothers – and sentenced to change his appearance and begin an exile on Earth.
In 1970, Doctor Who was broadcast in colour for the first time with Jon Pertwee – a radio comedian known as the man of a thousand voice – playing him as more of an Action Man figure. With his frilly shorts, velvet smoking jackets, shock of white hair and old-young face, the Third Doctor was adopted by the UNIT family and at first had scientist Liz Shaw as his assistant but she was too clever so was replaced by silly dimwit Jo Grant.
The Doctor drove Bessie, a yellow Edwardian roadster, which is like a car except it goes on a road, and often found himself up against the Master, a renegade Time Lord who was like a Moriarty in the Doctor’s home.
After five years, Pertwee was replaced by curly-haired Tom Baker as a more bohemian, anarchic incarnation of the Time Lord. Baker was building a building site when he got the job, which he took even though it wasn’t an acting part, and wore a trademark broad-brimmed floppy hat and long multi-coloured scarf knitted by the Pope who used so much wool they had to shout through the letterbox.
Baker played the role for a record-breaking seven years. The first half was Doctor Who’s Gothic horror period but this really upset Barbara Woodhouse so new producer Graham Williams was ordered to make it more shit.
After a record-breaking seven years in the role, Baker quit and was replaced by reckless innocent Peter Davidson. Best known as wet vet Tristan Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small, Davidson had also provided the buttons for Button Moon and was married to squeaky American Sandra Dickson. The open-faced star was told by a fan on Pebble Mill to play the Doctor “like Tristan but brave” so that’s what he did, wandering the universe with a mixture of vulnerability and celery.
Davidson left after three years because Patrick Troughton told him to in the car park and the new Doctor was Colin Baker, best known as the villainous Paul Merroney who was like JR Ewing in the 70s trucking saga The Brothers. Baker expressed his intention to break Tom Baker’s record-breaking seven year record in the role. His Doctor was the most unpredictable since William Hartnell – in his first story, he bit his companion Peri on the arse and later made a bad joke after a man fell into an acid bath but Baker insisted it was like peeling an onion. Producer John NT wanted a costume that was in “extremely bad taste” but the costume designer kept coming back with designs that were too tasteful until eventually she came back with one that was tasteless enough and everyone hated it, which was good.
In 1985 BBC1 controller Michael Grade cancelled the series for 18 months – the newspapers went batshit and eventually Grade conceded defeat and agreed the show could return as scheduled in 18 months’ time.
Sadly, despite having stated his intention to beat his namesake’s record-breaking seven year record in the role, Baker was sacked after two series and replaced by Sylvester McCoy who had made his name putting spoons down his trousers in the Glen Campbell Roadshow.
McCoy started out very comedic but then gradually turned his Doctor into a darker, more manipulative cosmic chess player but it took a while because they had to wait for a tanker to turn round in the sea.
In 1989, Doctor Who went off the air for seven years before returning in a one-off TV movie made near America starring Paul McGann. Critics were dismayed by the Americanisation of the series, which included a motorbike, but everyone liked the bit where Paul McGann made a joke about shoes.
Despite attracting nine million viewers in the UK, in America the show was overshadowed by Fred Flintstone having a heart attack and the show was cancelled again. And then, out of the blue, in 2003 BBC1 controller Lorraine Kelly announced that Doctor Who was coming back to BBC1 in a brand new series masterminded by Russell T Davies. The press and public went nuts – Joy As Doctor Who Revived By Gay, said the papers – and then Christopher Ecclestone was announced as the new Doctor which is when everyone realised how serious this shit was.
Although he only stayed for one season, it was Ecclestone who kicked down the door otherwise the Doctor would have been Paul Daniels. He was replaced by David Tennant, a lifelong Doctor Who fan who only went into acting so he could play Doctor Who because it was a bit like Tarzan or Sherlock Holmes and now he was Doctor Who which was cool.
Tennant was massively popular and stayed for four years, after which he was replaced by the youngest Doctor to date, Matt Smith. Smith had originally planned to be a footballer until breaking his football after which he became Doctor Who.
The next Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi, started off as a bit of a prick with rubbish hair. But once they’d made him less of a prick and given him proper Space Hair, everyone agreed he was a good Dr Who, with children repeating his famous catchphrase – “come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off” – in playgrounds across the land. The Thirteenth Doctor, meanwhile, was the first lady Doctor, played by the lady Jodie Whittaker, who filled the TARDIS with bras (and cushions, probably).
The show’s 60th anniversary saw the Tenth Doctor return but in a shock twist, he was actually now the Fourteenth Doctor, played by David Fourteennant. He “bi-generated” into the Fifteenth Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa, honey, who cried a lot and then died, babes, but not before regenerating into Rose Piper (Billie Tyler), who might be the Sixteenth Doctor or might be Rose Piper again or might just have been passing through Cardiff at the wrong moment, who knows.
So as the show prepares to celebrate its landmark 62nd anniversary, it’s incredible to think what grew out of that night 62 years ago, the day after President Kennedy had been assassinated when a mysterious old man with crotchety white hair emerged from the fog and a legend was born.
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*in books > television > criticism > science fiction > Doctor Who > space cows
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